For a long time it was the fashion, and with many it still is, to regard the Northern States of the Federal Union as the conservative element of American society. It is true that the Northern States are the conservative element of the federal government; because the Union is nearly altogether the creature of their will and of their interests. Therefore, on all occasions they have sought to strengthen the federal power through tariffs and banks and large schemes of internal improvement. But such conservatism as this does not touch the organic structure of society; it merely determines its external form and appearance. The conservatism of slavery is deeper than this; it goes to the vital relations of capital toward labor, and by the firm footing it gives the former it enables the intellect of society to push boldly forward in the pursuit of new forms of civilization. At present it is the struggle of free labor with slave labor which prevents the energies of the former from being directed against the capital of the North through the ingenious machinery of the ballot box and universal suffrage; and it is difficult to conceive how capital can be secured from the attacks of the majority in a pure democracy unless with the aid of a force which gets its strength from slave labor. The Spanish American States, after their independence, aimed to establish Republics without slavery; and the history of forty years of disorder and public crime is fertile in lessons for him who hath eyes to see and ears to hear. Carried away by his imagination, or rather by his sensibilities, Mr. Clay pleaded the cause of Spanish American independence, and anticipated good government as the result of the movement. The policy he urged was undoubtedly wise both for the United States and for England, inasmuch as it opened the old Spanish colonies to other commercial nations. But the effects of independence have not been beneficial on the people of the colonies themselves. Spain gave order, at least, to the possessions she held in the New World; and order, attended as it was by exaction, sometimes even by extortion, was better than the anarchy of so-called Republican rule. In Nicaragua whole tracts which were cultivated under the Spanish dominion have gone to waste since the independence; and the indigo of the Isthmus, which even ten years ago was a valuable article of export, has disappeared almost entirely from trade.